>
> ODBC was nice for the past 4-8 years but currently everyone in the industry
> is looking for something new, something that will connect to non SQL databases
> in an elegant way. Something that unites several different database in one
> (virtual) database, something distributed, lightweight, ... this is everything
> ODBC is not.
>

1. "connect to non SQL databases in an elegant way"

Of course this leads us to OLE-DB and ADO. But remember.... the default provider for OLE-DB is
ODBC and this is, in fact what most people are using when they use ADO & OLE-DB. So for most,
ADO and OLE-DB just add another two layers to ODBC. I agree, however, ODBC is best at accessing
tabular data such as is found in relational databases.... not objects.

2. "(virtual) database"

Universal Database Access Technology is often base upon ODBC. A virtual database server is
created by a process which ties multiple ODBC Drivers together. I beleive that this is how
OpenLinks ( http://www.openlinksw.com ) virtual server works.

3. "distributed"

Two tier is a no brainer... just use ODBC and an SQL Server. n-tier  can also be done with
ODBC... for example; you can drop ODBC based COM objects into Microsofts Transactions Server
anywhere you want. This is not to say that we can do this on Linux but that it could be done if
one wanted to do the work on it.

4. "lightweight"

ODBC is the litest data access spec out there which provides portable code and plugable drivers
(change data source without compiling or linking).


Peter Harvey